US charges two Somali men for attempting to join Daesh in Egypt’s Sinai

The department announced in a press release on Tuesday that the defendants, both refugees from Somalia, were arrested by FBI agents after they checked in for their flight at the Tucson International Airport in Arizona.
 
"On July 26, Ahmed Mahad Mohamed and Abdi Yemani Hussein, were arrested for conspiring to provide material support and resources to ISIL, a designated foreign terrorist organization," the department said in the press release.
 
"Ultimately, the defendants purchased airline tickets to travel to Egypt, with the intention to travel on to Sinai and join ISIL," it added.
 
The Justice Department said the two men had been in communication with an FBI undercover employee whom they believed was a supporter of Daesh ideology and planned to travel overseas to fight for the Takfiris or to conduct an attack within the United States.
 
If convicted, the two Somalis will be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
 
The Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014, after a deadly terrorist attack left 33 Egyptian soldiers dead.
 
Over the past few years, terrorists have been carrying out anti-government activities and fatal attacks in Egypt, taking advantage of the turmoil that erupted after the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013.
 
The Velayat Sinai group, which is affiliated with Daesh, has claimed responsibility for most of the assaults.
 
Last year, the Egyptian army launched a full-scale counterterrorism campaign on an order by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, after a terror attack in North Sinai claimed the lives of more than 300 people at a mosque.
 
The army says 650 suspected terrorists have been killed in the operation so far.